BOSTON, April 22 (UPI) — One week after the Boston Marathon bombings, a series of ceremonies began Monday to mourn those who died in the blasts and the aftermath, officials said.
The memorials come as investigators began questioning Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, one of two Chechen brothers suspecting of planting the bombs that exploded at the marathon finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 170. Tsarnaev’s brother Tamerlan, 26, died in a shootout with police early Friday in Watertown.
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told CNN Monday evidence collected so far indicates the brothers were planning more mayhem.
“The two suspects were armed with handguns at the scene of the shoot-out. And there were multiple explosive devices, including a large one that was similar to the pressure cooker device that was found on Boylston Street [at the finish line],” Davis said.
“I saw that with my own eyes. I believe that the only reason that someone would have those in their possession was to further attack people and cause more — more death and destruction.”
A period of silence at 2:50 p.m. Monday has been declared statewide to mark the moment the bombs exploded.
The day’s event will also include a memorial service at Boston University and a funeral.
A memorial service is scheduled for Wednesday for Sean A. Collier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer killed Thursday night in his patrol car allegedly by the brothers,
A wake for Krystle Campbell, 29, began the week of memorials. Campbell died from wounds she received in the bombing. She was buried Monday.
Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, speaking at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, noted many of the 170 wounded at the race had prayed at the church the week before.
O’Malley called on those in attendance to “be a people of reconciliation, not revenge.”
About three dozen victims remained hospitalized Monday, with three in critical condition.
As the memorials proceeded, prosecutors prepared Monday to file charges against the surviving bombing suspect.
Tsarnaev was in critical but stable condition with a gunshot wound to the neck, Boston police said, but was responding to questions in writing
The type of neck wound indicates he may have tried to kill himself, authorities said.
It “had the appearance of a close-range, self-inflicted style,” a senior U.S. official told The New York Times.
Investigators are asking him about other possible cell members and other unexploded bombs, the sources told ABC.
The sources didn’t say what Tsarnaev wrote in response.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said they believed Tsarnaev and his brother acted alone.
When the suspects seized a Mercedes-Benz sport utility vehicle and held the driver hostage, they told him they planned to go to New York, the senior U.S. official told the Times.
It was not immediately clear if they told the driver what they planned to do in New York.
Davis also told The Boston Globe Tamerlan Tsarnaev appeared to have died because his younger brother drove over him in the stolen SUV in a desperate getaway.
He said the older Tsarnaev was alive and struggling with police until Dzhokhar Tsarnaev drove over him, dragging him on the pavement and apparently inflicting the fatal injuries that killed him.
The younger Tsarnaev was captured Friday night, after hiding for hours in a boat stored in a Watertown back yard.
The Globe reported Tamerlan Tsarnaev angrily disrupted talks at his mosque that he though conflicted with Islamic teachings. One of those talks involved a comparison between the Prophet Muhammad and civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In the second incident, Tsarnaev called the speaker a hipocrite and accused him of contaminating people’s minds.
Copyright 2013 United Press International, Inc. (UPI).
